Does mandolin make other instruments seem hard?

[Bertram Henze]

Guitar I never honestly tried (too many strings), but I started with the violin.

Four fingers, six strings, you are out gunned from the start

I feel understood.
Now that you mention it - it never occurred to me to count guitar players' fingers, I think I'm on to something...

Bertram

[catmandu2]

The violin can be played a lot faster than fretted instruments. I am not sure of all the reasons, but perhaps because #you don't have to press down as hard to stop the string, versus the mandolin, where you have to "bend" the string over the fret.

More accurately, we use the frets only as "stops" and shouldn't actually bend the string around the fret wire.

The reason fiddles are so much faster is use of the bow which facilitates speed.

[Capt. E]

I come to the mandolin by a very different path: Saxophone, Clarinet, flute, guitar, harmonica, Cajun Button accordion, Mandolin. The transition from harmonica to Cajun button accordion was rather easy, the in-out diatonic form is almost identical. I feel the rythmn and timing required for the button keyboard somehow has translated well into the mandolin. Plus I had always found the guitar to be hard until I discovered open tunings. Open D was a revelation and made playing much easier. I think the mandolin is easier to play than a standard tuned guitar. Chords are simpler (still hard to squeeze my fingers in for an A though) and you can get every bit as many "sounds" out of it. The accordion is still my favorite, but the mandolin it catching up fast.

Capt. E

[catmandu2]

I could never play the fiddle cause I would just stand there all day and go nuts about my intonation....

Yes? We probably all do.. . But, hey...you can do it really fast.

[Evan Mahoney]

I read every post, except; I did not finish the post about the guy who said the lap steel guitar is his new squeese. No offense. It was great, too, I forgot what the topic was. All the details have been pawed out it seems, but I have one question: How many on this thread work with the FFcP as written by JazzMando.com, and how many work from another book? Just trying to find the common groundwork for agreeing with so many on this thread.

[catmandu2]

...and you can get every bit as many "sounds" out of it.

Well, not quite. That's why the guitar is still worth playing; if the mando could do everything the guitar can, there wouldn't be many people struggling with 5, 6 and more-note polyphony on the guitar.

[aimee]

Good topic.

Guitar now seems clumsy and illogical. I think it's just tuned that way to make pentatonic scales easy to remember.

Trying to learn fiddle. It should be easy, 'cause it's tuned the same, right? There's only two difficult things about playing fiddle- the intonation and the bowing!

[Arto]

"Four fingers, six strings, you are out gunned from the start."

Piano. 88 keys, 10 fingers. You are machine-gunned from the start.

More seriously: For me this far, the wierdest and most illogical instrument I have been trying to learn, is the charango. Five double strings, re-entrant tuning like ukulele, but more complicated. Don´t get me wrong, I love the little beast and its sound, but playing the thing drives me nuts, mostly. My problem probably is that I´m not "at home" with understanding music as chords - I play on mandolin the melody as I hear it or read it, or on piano the music as I read it.

But still - when I started experimenting with an ukulele (sort of stripped-down charango? sorry), I thought the re-entrant tuning would make the chords easy to play, even if not so logical. Unfortunately this was not my experience. It still doesn´t make sense to me...

[Bertram Henze]

Piano. 88 keys, 10 fingers. You are machine-gunned from the start.

Well, at least you don't have to press them all down at the same time

My father played the piano, but I could never come to terms with it for a different reason shown in this calculation:

2 arms, 2 different things to play at a time, 1 male brain - outgunned again.

Seems there are a lot of instruments out there invented by aliens with different numbers of body parts. I think I'm on to something...

Bertram

[JeffD]

Piano. 88 keys, 10 fingers. You are machine-gunned from the start.

Doesn't four courses 22 frets make more sense than 88 strings, one "fret" each.

The mandolin is looking better all the time

[catmandu2]

Bertram, don't try pedal steel: both hands, both feet, and KNEES too--it's like eating a salad and talking on the cellphone while driving a car.

[fredfrank]

Mandolin does make more sense to me than a guitar fingerboard. But speed on the mandolin seems to elude me. Just as I thought I was getting somewhere, I got old and can't move as lithely as I ustacould!

I can pretty much keep up speed-wise on the banjo with anyone, but musically, I have to know a piece pretty well on the banjo. No faking it.

[Bertram Henze]

Bertram, don't try pedal steel: both hands, both feet, and KNEES too--it's like eating a salad and talking on the cellphone while driving a car.

Won't try it - promised!
Uilleann pipes is another example - both elbows for bellows and bag, both hands for the chanter, and one wrist for regulator switches.

On the other hand, that salad/cellphone thing doesn't seem so bad in comparison - sounds like a standard MacDonalds drive-in procedure.

Bertram

[catmandu2]

But I know from experience that driving with the knees is much easier than learning pedal steel--at the drive thru, you don't have to focus on being "in tune."